Category: Grant project

When we were first contemplating the undertaking that became the Ready for Success project, we did what any academic librarian would do: a literature search.

Not surprisingly, there is no lack of published research on our chosen topic, namely the research skills that students take with them from high school into college. We had a lot of experience working with students at Stony Brook and we had seen what aspects of the research process they found most challenging. We wondered what their foundational knowledge. How had their high school teachers and librarians presented the range of skills and mindsets that go into what is often called “information literacy?” We were also looking for evidence of high school/college collaborations or partnerships across this “information literacy gap.”

What we found was varied and extensive. This post is not a full blown lit review but more a chance to point out a few highlights of the research we dipped into.

There are a number of studies that look at the research skills of first year college students as well as the types of research they encounter in college classes. One interesting approach to the problem looked at the assignments on class syllabi to see what professors expected of new students (Donham 2019).

Our keynote speaker, Brenda Boyer, is involved in a study out of Rutgers University looking at college students and the preparation they received in high school (Boyer & Dziedzic-Elliot 2023).

Since we knew we wanted to work with high school librarians and classroom teachers, we were interested in learning more about how they collaborated. Sarah Crary’s surveys of teachers and librarians looked at each group’s perception of the other when it came to research instruction (2019).

We also came across many case studies of successful high school teacher/librarian partnerships, ranging from librarians embedded in honors-level classes (Hamilton 2012) to shared professional development workshops (Montiel-Overal 2010).

All of this research helped inform the approach we took with our grant partners at Brentwood High School and the activities we designed over the span of the grant. We’ll be talking more in-depth about the experience and possible implications for high school research instruction at our March 15th summit at Stony Brook University (still time to register!).

And if you like research as much as we do, we thought we’d share the bibliography we compiled and continue to maintain. We’ve linked to the open source full text where available.

We were honored to present on our Ready for Success project at this summer’s SUNY Librarians Association (SUNYLA) conference held on the stunning campus of SUNY Maritime College in the Bronx from June 14-16.

Speaking to a room full of college librarians, we walked them through the design of our program along with feedback from the teachers at Brentwood and our own assessments of how the project went. We even were able to include some video testimonials from cohort members that we recorded the week before.

In the discussion that followed, it was great to hear that other SUNY libraries have been addressing the high school-to-college transition in a variety of ways.

Beyond presenting, we’re also in the grand assessment phase of the project, looking back at everything that happened and sifting through all the feedback to write up a full report and plan next steps. We hope to bring that to a wider audience soon!

University Libraries is partnering with Brentwood High School (BHS) on a grant project to improve college and workforce readiness by strengthening research skills in their students. The grant from the William E. & Maude S. Pritchard Charitable Trust aims to create a scalable and replicable “train the trainer” model that can be implemented throughout Suffolk County school districts. The focus of this project is to help underserved high schools embed academic research opportunities into their curriculum. Improving the research and critical thinking skills of students before graduation will empower them to achieve excellence in college and the workforce. Leveraging the expertise of university librarians, high school librarians, teachers and administrators, this project will strengthen the collaborations of these key stakeholders for student success.

The three-year grant will culminate in a regional conference for all stakeholders to celebrate the participants and to discuss ways to further strengthen the teaching of research and information literacy skills in high schools.

The grant team consists of principal investigator Janet Clarke, Associate Dean for Research & User Engagement, co-principal investigators Chris Kretz, Head of Academic Engagement, and Christine Fena, Undergraduate Success Librarian, with administrative support from Stacey Horath and Zerina Makhdoomi.